


Everything Will Make Sense in the Morning

by DrDiabolical



Series: Reasonable [1]
Category: Naruto
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Dark Namizake Minato, Gen, Hatake Kakashi-centric, Manhandling, Namikaze Minato Lives, POV Hatake Kakashi, Power Imbalance, Prologue, atm he's just freaking kakashi out, it's not sexual but it gives kakashi bad vibes, lmk if this needs more tags idk how to tag this, naruto uzumaki died in the ninetails attack, said i wouldn't tag dark minato yet because it's not immediately obvious but I might as well, so did kushina, treating people like ornaments, unsettling behaviour
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-02
Updated: 2020-09-02
Packaged: 2021-03-06 16:48:44
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,803
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26252182
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DrDiabolical/pseuds/DrDiabolical
Summary: Hogake Minato Namikaze summons Kakashi Hatake to his office and that is the last order he is given that evening that he understands. Everything that follows is... strange.(AU in which Kushina and Naruto died during the Ninetails attack but Minato survived. This takes place nearly a year later. Kakashi is a barely functioning fourteen-year-old ANBU who is a long way from who he is in part one. Minato projects that he is a reasonable individual but he really isn't.)This fic is the first instalment in a series in which Minato's strange behaviour develops and everything gets a little darker.
Relationships: Hatake Kakashi & Namikaze Minato
Series: Reasonable [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1907131
Comments: 6
Kudos: 96





	Everything Will Make Sense in the Morning

**Author's Note:**

> This is Kakashi's PoV and he's as clueless as you are! Inspired by the dark/psychopath Minato ideas bobbing around on tumblr, although he's mostly just kind of weird here. 
> 
> If you haven't encountered the dark/psychopath Minato theory before, I'll try reblog it if I find it. If any of you come across any posts or h/c about dark Minato, I'd love it if you could tag me in them! (@drdiabolical on tumblr) so I can rb. Essentially, people have pointed out that a lot of Minato's reactions and actions don't really add up to this wonderful preconception we have of him.

"Ah, Kakashi, there you are," Minato said as Kakashi gently closed the door to the Hokage's office behind him. There was a small click in the relative silence of the room that signalled that the lock was in place and Kakashi took his hand off the knob slowly, fingers ghosting along the wood as he came away from the door. 

His grip hadn't been strong to begin with. While Kakashi didn't think before crushing a throat with his bare hands on a mission, outside of his work he was conscious of his movements, to the point of detriment at times, especially in Minato's presence. He wasn't sure why, he hadn't thought too deeply about it. 

_... friend killer …_

He looked at Minato, switching his slightly unfocused gaze from his hands to his sensei-turned-hokage in a neck movement that was probably too precise to not come off as a little creepy. But Minato just smiled his usual sunny-closed-eyes-smile and didn't react to Kakashi's awkward posture and the way he stumbled through interactions and always said not the wrong things but not the right things either and people would give him looks and shy away and not seek him out past first impressions and they knew he wasn't normal that something was wrong with him they whispered they called him things they called him-

"Come here," Minato said, eyes open now and mouth in an agreeable line, and gestured above his table, indicating the space in front of his desk where a chair would usually be but wasn't. "Take a seat."

On automatic, Kakashi walked forwards and came to a stop before the desk. Minato's expression gave no further explanation for what he was expected to do, not even when Minato cocked his head to the side slightly, his hair falling wayside, and his lips spread in the way they did when he watched the new genin train. Genin could be clueless at times and Minato smiled like that at them when they were, finding their honest mistakes - mistakes that would get them killed in the field - and open confusion - bad habit, they shouldn't broadcast their emotional state to the enemy - endearing somehow. 

"It's not like you to disobey your superiors, Kakashi," Minato said and his tone sounded good-natured but Kakashi's blood ran cold regardless and he cringed ever so slightly, hunching a little more into himself. Kakashi didn't rely on his own judgement unless he absolutely had to and, generally, his superiors were more level headed than he was. He didn't disobey unless they were clearly incompetent _and_ Kakashi was the next logical choice of leadership.

"Take a seat, Kakashi."

There was no seat. It was such a simple command but there was no seat. Sweat dampened the hair he trapped behind his forehead protector and his hands clenched and unclenched where they hung uselessly by his thighs. Still, Minato continued to watch him, expression unchanging, leaving no hints and Kakashi couldn't help but think that this was all unfair. Was he missing something? Not seeing underneath the underneath? Was this a test?

While Minato's posture radiated never-ending patience, his eyes - there wasn't impatience in his eyes but there was something that he couldn't get a read on. His sensei had always been unfathomable to a certain extent, his feelings seemed obvious at first but then… sometimes Kakashi wondered if there was something else beneath the surface of his amiable stress-free demeanour. 

Unsure, Kakashi began to lower himself to his knees to take a seat on the floor and stopped abruptly when Minato chuckled. "Not like that," he said, shaking his head to himself as if to say 'what am I going to do with you?' and Kakashi was taken back for a moment, in stark remembrance of the times Minato had used that exact phrasing and tone with him and Obito. 

_"Not like that," Minato shook his head and chuckled. Kakashi scowled at his upside-down face and quickly rolled out of his embarrassing position on the ground. Obito hadn't faired any better, also an undignified sprawl on the grass, a smattering of bark chips marring his foul expression._

_"Don't look at me like that, you did just as well as I did!" He shouted when he caught Kakashi staring, jumping to his feet with a little too much gusto and needing to rebalance himself again._

_"Shut up," Kakashi said for lack of a better retort. However despairingly, it was true, it didn't help that Rin had mastered tree walking hours before they had either. Not only was he not the best, but he was also on par with the worst._

_"Now, now, boys," Minato's voice drew them both away from their brewing spat. His smile was indulgent like it always was whenever one of them, usually Obito or Rin, messed up. It seemed to put those two at ease but it never had the same effect on Kakashi. If he messed up in the field, he would die, there wasn't anything cute or humorous about death. "Let's go over this again, co-"_

"-me here," Minato said. Kakashi looked at the few centimetres between himself and the desk. He didn't understand, again. 

Minato huffed amusedly, as though Kakashi was a genin who was a little too stupid to understand a relatively basic ninja skill and required guidance - which he was not. He was a fourteen-year-old ANBU. A prodigy. With a sharingan. He didn't, this wasn't, that-

"Here," Minato patted the desk and Kakashi stared, perplexed. He looked at the desk, then himself, the desk and then at Minato who nodded. What. 

Half his mind convinced that he'd misunderstood, the other half preparing for Minato to reveal that he'd taken up his late wife's penchant for pranking without taking up her understanding of what actually constituted as a good prank, he placed a hand on the desk and gingerly sat on the edge, half facing Minato with one foot on the ground. 

Minato sighed, still amused, still indulgent, like Kakashi was being especially dense today and that was cute and endearing which it wasn't because _idiocy gets you and your loved ones killed_. He was being treated like a clueless child and he wasn't a child but he was starting to feel like maybe he was clueless maybe he was a bit dense because Minato clearly thought whatever he was asking for was obvious but it didn't make any sense just what in the world did Minato want-

Large hands either side of his ribcage snapped him from his internal panic and threw him into a very different kind of panic, the alert am-I-going-to-die-today panic he sometimes felt on missions, until he registered them as Minato's hands and his head was filled with dumbfounded confusion. His hands were large and his ribcage felt small in them. 

His mind shuttered to complete blankness as Minato lifted him over the desk and sat him facing him, his knees on the inside edge of the desk, his feet unable to touch the ground. "There we go," Minato said as if this was what he had been after all along and sat back in his chair, their legs centimetres apart. Too close. 

Kushina had always been the one who hugged Kakashi. The term 'personal space' had never seemed to have been a part of her vocabulary. He wouldn't ever tell anyone, but that was what he missed the most about her. ANBU often forced proximity, whether that be huddling for warmth or sharing a place to hide in desperation, but Kushina's hugs had always been welcome. Now he maintained his distance between himself and others where possible. It helped that most people maintained their distance from him already. 

Minato was close but not that close, especially after Kushina's (and Naruto's) death. 

His fingers twitched and he gripped the desk loosely to keep himself from fidgeting. He had followed the 'order', in a roundabout about way, but he still didn't understand. 

"You're far too light, Kakashi," Minato said, leant back comfortably in his chair with his hands interlocked across his stomach. "Are you eating properly?"

 _No,_ was almost his reflexive answer, his mind off-kilter from the strange situation he found himself in and everything that had lead up to it. Nothing bad was happening but he couldn't help but feel that the situation was wrong. But Minato was his sensei and his Hokage, Kakashi trusted him. Kakashi did not trust his own judgement at the best of times, anyway. Minato knew better.

"... yes," he said and was struck by the realisation that this was the first word he had spoken since entering the office. He hadn't even greeted his Hokage. He was off his game today, maybe he really had been incredibly dense and this did all make sense, his mind just hadn't connected the dots yet. 

"I think we both know that you aren't the best at taking care of yourself, Kakashi," Minato said like they were sharing some kind of inside joke. Kakashi was ready to despair, how many times would Minato observe a fatal flaw in Kakashi and laugh?

Silence rang out and Kakashi realised a second too late that he was supposed to respond. This was a conversation. He'd been doing his best to avoid those and it usually wasn't that difficult of a task thanks to both his unsavoury reputation and his wrongness - he was a bit broken and it showed. But if people were going to look past that, he'd need another tactic. 

"Hmm," Minato murmured and, for the first time since Kakashi arrived, he sounded displeased with his behaviour. "Oh well," he shrugged and his friendly nature was back like a switch had been flicked and Kakashi's briefly stolen breath returned with it. "If you aren't going to talk… hmm," he sat forwards and looked at Kakashi in thought, "ah, I know."

Kakashi would have loved for Minato to explain what he knew because Kakashi did not know and preferred to be warned before he was manhandled. He was a ninja and so was Minato, that should be obvious. He was sure Minato wouldn't react kindly to the same treatment. 

Regardless, Minato's hands found themselves either side of Kakashi's ribcage again but now Kakashi had enough sense to scowl and protest the hold. But Minato just chuckled at his squirming and placed him on the right of the desk where it curved so that he was at Minato's side. 

He very narrowly avoided a short stack of paperwork that Minato then shifted to the centre of the desk. Kakashi's mouth opened slightly in shock when Minato retrieved his pen and began working as though Kakashi wasn't there. 

"... Hokage-sama?" He asked after a few minutes filled with only the swish of Minato's ink against the paper. He seemed content as he worked, although his face was close to blank. 

"Yes, Kakashi?" Minato replied, not taking his eyes off his work.

Kakashi wasn't sure what he should say. It's getting dark outside, can I go home? That made him sound like the child he was being treated like. Why am I here? That would be admitting that he was every bit as clueless as Minato had suspected and more because clearly Minato thought Kakashi knew what he was doing, otherwise he would explain, right? Although Minato wasn't always in the habit of explaining himself, it was a slight eccentricity of his, or so Kakashi had overheard others say. Usually, Kakashi understood his orders and didn't need to ask. 

"What do I need to do?" He settled on. The awkwardness of the situation was sitting heavily on his shoulders and it made him want to twitch and shiver to shift it. He gripped the desk harder instead. 

"Nothing, carry on as you are," Minato said but then his pen stilled, "although…" he murmured to himself.

Kakashi couldn't suppress a flinch when Minato's hand reached for his left eye, covered as it was beneath his forehead protector. Minato gave him a sheepish apology and telegraphed his movements more obviously as he lifted the protector from his eye and adjusted it so that it sat on his forehead like a regular shinobi. 

Red bloomed to life and Kakashi was quick to close Obito's eye. In the two years he'd had it, he hadn't quite gotten used to the shift in vision and the siphoning of chakra. It was easy to ignore when in the throes of assassination but in the quiet of the Hokage's office, not so much. 

"That's fine for now, I'll allow it," Minato said, gesturing to his closed eye, "but I'd like you to open it when I have visitors."

Minato appeared to be waiting for some kind of response so Kakashi nodded. 

"Good, and be careful to maintain the impression that you always have it activated," he added and ruffled Kakashi's hair. Kakashi wasn't sure when the last time he had done that was, he supposed they hadn't been in contact that much after he joined ANBU and with the deaths after the Ninetails attack…

"Yes, Hokage-sama," Kakashi said. He was on the cusp of understanding his presence, he was sure. Was he being used as an intimidation tactic? A display of power? There were easier and more sensible ways to accomplish the same goal. Kakashi could stand to the side as an ANBU guard, for instance. 

Now that he thought about it, Kakashi couldn't sense the usual ANBU detail. How had it taken him this long to realise that? Granted, he sort of just expected them to be there but... That settled that, he was not up to par with his usual standards, he was sure all of this would make sense the next day once his brain kicked back into gear. 

He fell into his look-out trance as Minato worked, aware of his surroundings in the sense that he was attuned to any changes but otherwise his thoughts were still. It was an amalgamation of the meditation techniques Minato had tried to teach their team years ago and his own methods of coping with the mind-numbing boredom-and-anxiety that the slow parts of ANBU missions were rife with. This wasn't an ANBU mission but it served to keep him calm and put a stop to his nervous fidgeting. 

He clocked in twice, once when the ANBU detail returned and once again when a visitor arrived. He displayed Obito's eye as he was asked, making sure to open it before the visitor came in, but he didn't look at the visitor with it. He fell back into his trance while Minato dealt with the chuunin. The chuunin wasn't the most professional, he kept sending nervous glances in Kakashi's direction. 

When the chuunin left, Minato told Kakashi that he'd done exactly as had been requested and that his shift was complete. 

"The intention is more for foreign guests and civilians, particularly those who feel as though they have more power than they do," Minato explained as he neatened his stacks of paper and tidied his desk. "You've already made a reputation for yourself, don't you know?"

Kakashi did know. His face had been in the bingo book of an enemy nin. He'd wanted to tear it out. 

"Of course, I'm a little more well known," Minato laughed at his own understatement, as though his kill order hadn't long since ascended to 'flee on sight', "but there are other implications with you here that work to my advantage."

He didn't elaborate further although Kakashi sorely wished he would. 

"Shift over, Kakashi," he repeated over his shoulder as he turned to leave. Caught up in the surreality of everything that had happened, Kakashi hadn't thought to move from his seat on the desk. 

Shaking himself slightly, he gently hopped down from the desk, feet glad to find their hold on the ground again, and padded over to Minato. They walked in silence through the administrative building and out into the night air, the only exception to the no-talking theme being the jolly nods and greetings Minato gave to the shinobi who passed them. 

He broke the silence when they reached the intersection where Kakashi would turn one way towards his apartment and Minato would turn the other towards the empty Uzumaki residence. 

"Train, complete your missions and, when you aren't doing one of the two, report to me and I'll determine where your presence will be most useful," Minato ordered before his voice returned to something more lighthearted, "but make sure to eat, alright? You need to look after yourself."

He ruffled Kakashi's hair again and Kakashi almost ducked in time to miss his hand. Despite how weird everything had been, it felt like Minato was returning to him. Sort of. 

In the morning, he said to himself internally, a mantra, in the morning everything would make sense.

**Author's Note:**

> My personal headcanon of Minato is that he has everyone convinced that he is a very reasonable and nice person because everything he says and does - he says and does with a tone and presence that screams 'reasonable and nice'. "Join ANBU Kashi :)"
> 
> What's going through this particular concoction of Dark!Minato's head here will become a bit more apparent in the coming instalments, especially when I get around to the piece in his PoV. For now, I'll say that his wife and son are dead and so are his other two students. He's got one student left and all of these empty roles. He's also the Hokage in a village without a jinchuriki still recovering from a tailed beast attack that came not so long after a war. These two ideas + how I'm writing his thought process = this and what will follow. 
> 
> If you're confused, don't worry, you're kind of meant to be at this point. 
> 
> [tumblr](https://drdiabolical.tumblr.com/) if you're interested, just made it.


End file.
